Alicia Wong, Today Online 13 Nov 07
He may have made winning a Nobel Peace Prize seem easy: One docu-movie and former United States vice-president Al Gore shared the honours this year with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
But when it comes to environmental work, the importance of successfully conveying the issues to the public — which is what Mr Gore did with An Inconvenient Truth — cannot be understated, according to the coordinating lead author of the panel's Fourth Assessment Report, Professor Richard C J Somerville (picture).
Prof Somerville, a climate scientist and distinguished professor emeritus at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, told reporters yesterday that people needed to "tell their governments that these issues are important to them".
"Polling data show this is not an overpowering No-1 priority … but I think governments are responsive," he said, citing western Europe's several centre-right governments that made the environment a "high priority" despite a pro-business philosophy.
The refusal, on the other hand, by the US to move on environmental policies until developing countries do so is frustrating for the American on a personal level. Prof Somerville, who is in Singapore as a Lee Kuan Yew Distinguished Fellow and was speaking in his capacity as a scientist, called doubters of the effects of global warming "professional contrarians".
It is like smoking. It took 50 years to prove that smoking causes health problems, and he expects environmental education to take time, too. "Sceptical people are simply not well-informed about science," he said.
But "people listen to their physicians and that's all we are". As "planetary physicians", he said, scientists tell governments and people "there are different ways to behave and there are consequences".
While climate science, like medical science, is imperfect, "it's good enough to be a valuable ingredient to policymaking", added Prof Somerville, who will be giving two public lectures today and on Friday at the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University.
